After the shambles of KiwiBuild, now the government's proud track record on new social housing is being questioned.

It turns only half of the so called "new" public housing places are actually newly-built additional houses.

The government says it's on track to source 6850 places for families in need by the middle of the year.

But Stuff has crunched the numbers, and it turns out only 3500 are actually net new builds.

The rest are sourced from community housing providers and leased or bought on the private market.

Scott Figenshow, the Chief Executive of Community Housing Aotearoa, told Heather du Plessis-Allan that this is a problem the Labour Government has inherited from the National Government. 

"It's actually good news that the new public housing plan sort to address this problem and focus on new builds, but it's endemic that we thought we could address the housing crisis  by working on places rather than ensuring we were adding new, affordable housing supply."

He says that the Government is allowing income related rent to go into community housing provider places, which has been going on for years. 

He says that it's not a surprise to his group that this is a problem. 

"We're glad to see decisions have been made that mean they are going to stop doing it." 

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